It might be chilly outside—but that’s no excuse to stay out in the cold when it comes to the latest developments in enterprise tech. IT Brew rounded up three of the most interesting tech news stories from around the world in the last month.
AI jobs
The European Central Bank (ECB) crunched nine years of jobs data across 16 European nations. Its projection: AI will likely create jobs in high-skill occupations, have minimal impact on “low and medium-skill groups,” and have “neutral to slightly negative impacts” on wages, The Register reported.
Unfortunately for those stateside, ECB researchers anticipated those relatively mild effects of AI only in Europe and noted their findings might not be applicable to the US, where prior studies have found more negative consequences on low-skilled jobs. Analytics firm Forrester has also projected AI will replace 2.4 million US jobs by 2030, many of them in white-collar sectors like legal work, science, administration, and computers/math.
All of this remains highly speculative, the ECB admits—in a bulletin on the report, researchers concluded that since AI technology is still in its infancy, most of its “impact on employment and wages—and therefore on growth and equality—has yet to be seen.”
China chips
Chinese companies have evaded US regulations intended to prevent them from acquiring US-made chip-making equipment with ease, according to a US–China Economic and Security Review Commission report released in November.
Reuters reported the 741-page analysis found export controls introduced in October 2022 have not been effective at preventing Chinese firms from acquiring manufacturing tools necessary to fabricate chips with the 14 nanometer process or below. Chinese companies reportedly took advantage of lag time until similar rules were implemented in Japan and the Netherlands, well into 2023, to stockpile equipment.
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“Importers are often able to purchase the equipment if they claim it is being used on an older production line, and with limited capacity for end-use inspections, it is difficult to verify the equipment is not being used to produce more advanced chips,” the report found.
All told, China managed to import $13.8 billion in semiconductor equipment from foreign sources over the first eight months of this year, Reuters wrote. In October, according to Wired, the Commerce Department attempted to close many of the loopholes in the prior rules.
North Korean IT
Reuters alleged that North Korean IT workers are using increasingly elaborate tricks to land jobs for Western tech firms, citing leaked documents as well as interviews with cybersecurity researchers and a North Korean defector.
Interview scripts reportedly detailed answers to questions about “good corporate culture” (such as freedom “to express ideas and opinions”) and provided convenient excuses justifying remote employment. The documents also include “dozens of fraudulent résumés, online profiles, interview notes, and forged identities” obtained by Palo Alto Networks, Reuters reported. The news agency dug up evidence on the dark web that North Korean workers have found employment in Chile, New Zealand, the US, Uzbekistan, and the UAE.
“We would create 20 to 50 fake profiles a year until we were hired,” the defector told Reuters, adding, “Once I was hired, I would create another fake profile to get a second job.”